Conventional liquid-phase fatty ester hydrogenolysis processes are necessarily operated at high pressures owing to the limited solubility of hydrogen in the reaction medium. In a solvent-based process this problem can be overcome, but recycling and product-solvent separation may turn out to be difficult. An alternative is the use of supercritical solvents, for which the solubility of fatty esters and fatty alcohols is high. Dropping the pressure into the subcritical domain allows for easy product separation and reactant recycle. In the present work we have analyzed the hydrogenolysis of methyl palmitate in supercritical butane. A reliable estimation of properties of the supercritical mixture can be obtained by fitting experimental vapor-liquid equilibrium data with Schwatzentruber-Renon cubic equation of state. The reaction mixture remains supercritical for a maximum pressure of 9 MPa and temperature of 470 K for mole fractions of hydrogen and methyl palmitate of 0.1 and 0.025, respectively. In these conditions an equilibrium conversion of more than 99% can be reached. An industrial process is feasible.Paper no. J9819 in JAOCS 79, 75-83 (January 2002).The industrial route from natural fats and oils to fatty alcohols generally proceeds via hydrolysis of triglycerides to fatty acids, esterification to methyl esters, and hydrogenolysis of methyl esters to fatty alcohols (1). The last step is usually a catalytic process carried out in slurry or fixed-bed reactor using hydrogen between 20 and 30 MPa (2,3). Such high pressure is required in view of the low solubility of hydrogen in the methyl ester, and because of limitations of chemical equilibrium and catalyst activity. High operating pressures and a very large excess of hydrogen, 20 to 100 times the amount of fatty acid, seriously affect capital and operating costs. This explains the efforts made to arrive at low-pressure processes and low hydrogen-to-ester molar feed ratios.Oleofina (4) developed a special catalyst for a liquid-phase process at pressures below 6 MPa. Few details about the catalyst have been disclosed, and to our knowledge this process and catalyst have not been commercialized.Davy McKee Corporation reported promising developments (5). Using a vapor-phase process, they claim to obtain full methyl ester conversion at 0.7-7 MPa. The main disadvantage of this process lies in the fact that it relies on the volatility of the fatty ester feed. Especially C 16 and C 18 esters have such low vapor pressures that an excessive hot hydrogen recycle is required for their vaporization.In our group, a liquid-phase ester hydrogenolysis process based on an inert solvent was investigated (6). Small linear alkanes such as octane or high-boiling mineral white oil are suitable solvents. These solvents act as hydrogen carriers and allow fairly high hydrogen-to-ester molar ratios. By using solvents such as octane in combination with highly active Cu/ZnO/SiO 2 catalysts, full conversion could be reached at hydrogen pressures as low as 8 MPa. Because of the low hydrogen pre...